Death penalty critics speak up as US judge blocks series of executions

A US federal judge has blocked a series of executions planned by the state of Arkansas, as legal obstacles to the unprecedentedly intense schedule mounted and death-penalty opponents staged international protests.

US Judge Kristine Baker of the Eastern District of Arkansas noted in her decision that the southern state, which originally planned to conduct eight executions between April 17 and 27, had not carried out any since 2005.

She said the condemned prisoners had the right under the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution - which bans "cruel and unusual punishment" - to challenge the state's plans to put them to death by lethal injection with a controversial three-drug cocktail.

Her ruling covers nine inmates: six set to die this month, two who had earlier received temporary stays of execution and one whose death had yet to be scheduled.

A spokesperson for state Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said Arkansas would appeal the ruling, adding, "It is unfortunate that a US district judge has chosen to side with the convicted prisoners in one of their many last-minute attempts to delay justice".

The state has faced a series of legal setbacks in its plan to rush through the executions, which it said was necessary because its supply of one of the drugs used, midazolam, was about to expire.

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With the first executions just days away, Arkansas circuit court judge Wendell Griffen on Friday issued a temporary restraining order barring authorities from using vecuronium bromide as part of a lethal-injection protocol.

Judge Griffen said he needed time to study a request from drug distributor McKesson Corporation for the drug's use to be banned in state executions.

McKesson contends that Arkansas penal authorities purchased the vecuronium bromide, which causes paralysis, without warning that it would be used to put inmates to death.

The Arkansas Supreme Court had earlier granted a temporary reprieve to one of the prisoners, who suffers from mental problems.

Another death-row inmate had received a similar reprieve a few days earlier.

The series of legal roadblocks constitute a major setback for Arkansas's Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, who had pushed for the accelerated executions as the expiration of the state's supply of midazolam drew near.

The drugs used in lethal injections by some American states - 19 of the 50 no longer execute prisoners - have become increasingly difficult to obtain.

Many pharmaceutical companies, particularly in Europe, have banned their use for executions.

While lethal injection claims to be painless, death-penalty opponents have argued that the risk of badly botched executions is unacceptably high and spoken of inmates writhing in agony for minutes.

Arkansas's plan to reduce the number of its death-row prisoners by some 20 percent in the space of a week and a half has drawn sharp protests around the world.

The European Union on Wednesday urged Mr Hutchinson to commute the death-row inmates' sentences.

Amnesty International called on Arkansas to urgently halt "the conveyor belt of death which it is about to set in motion".

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch protested against the planned "flurry of state-sanctioned killings unseen in the modern history of the US death penalty".

John Grisham, the master of the legal thriller and an Arkansas native, called on his home state to stop the "madness".

"An execution is the most serious act a government can undertake," Mr Grisham wrote in an opinion piece published by USA Today.

"Why assume so many risks in the name of expediency?"

The governor responded Thursday in a news conference in Little Rock, the state capital.

"If I would have chosen to spread it out over four months or six months, would that have made any difference to the death-penalty opponents who are coming in here and protesting this?" he asked, in comments reported by the Arkansas Times.

"I don't think so."

The governor went into considerable detail about the gruesome murders behind some inmates' death sentences, saying victims' families were being forgotten.

And he suggested that Arkansas should face no retaliation over his accelerated execution plan because it was hardly at the forefront of states practicing capital punishment.

Since 2000, he noted, Texas had carried out 343 executions, and "Europe hasn't stopped doing business in Texas".

A former warden of Florida State Prison said his own mental health had begun to deteriorate by the time he left his position in 1998 after taking part in eight executions.

Ron McAndrew said he was particularly concerned about the psychological well-being of the handful of officials who would be involved if Arkansas were to proceed with the rapid-fire executions of several condemned men, originally set for April 17 to 27.

“We wanted the governor (of Arkansas) to understand that he's sitting in his office very comfortable. And these men are going to be partaking in a killing of another human being," Mr McAndrew said.

He doesn't use the word "execution," which he considers a euphemism.

"These officers, they get to know these inmates," he said.

"Twenty-four hours a day they work with these inmates. They feed them. They take them to get their showers, they take them for exercise. They stand in front of their cells and they talk to them when they feel lonely.

“The only persons that the inmates know are the officers. Suddenly it's the same officer who's taking them to another room to kill them.”

"The experience is something that will stay with you for a long time; I don't think it ever goes away."

The battle before the courts will continue to play out in coming days, notably over the much-talked-about drug at the center of the controversy.

The state's supply of midazolam expires on April 30.

Critics said that midazolam, a sedative meant to render a condemned person unconscious before other drugs are used to stop the heart, does not always work.

Some inmates have been left partly conscious, struggling for breath and writhing for nearly an hour before dying.

Lawyers for the condemned also say that the accelerated executions could take a severe toll on the small team of penitentiary employees who carry out the death penalty, and who have not had to do so for 12 years.

But Solomon Graves, a spokesman for the state penitentiary system, assured that those involved "are well-trained and qualified to carry out their respective responsibilities."